Page 64 of Queen Takes Checkmate
Fuck. I didn’t like that at all. Now Shara had not one, but two people in her house that were descended from sun gods.
Shara didn’t seem to be bothered by it. I could only hope that Isis’ blood in her was strong enough to combat anything Ra or Huitzilopochtli’s blood might throw at her.
“I suspected,” she replied softly. “You were the last Aima queen born in recent memory. That’s why my mother talked to you in dreams, isn’t it? To be sure she could replicate whatever your mother did to have me.”
“That’s how I knew to find a god of my own to have Xochitl, but I’ve been careful to try and never even say his name, especially outside my nest, just to be safe.”
“Tell me everything you can.”
“You remember how my brothers were conceived, right?”
As a young queen, Mayte’s mother had been fostered in a larger house, where the unspeakable happened. She was raped by their queen’s Blood.
I couldn’t comprehend how any Blood would even consider such an evil act on any woman. Let alone a queen, even a queen not his own. Our queens were so rare. Even five hundred years ago, Aima numbers had been declining rapidly.
If Shara ordered me to rape another woman, I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, even with her bond compelling me to complete her orders. Perhaps I was naive, but I couldn’t believe that our goddesses would have ever allowed such an atrocity to happen. I couldn’t be Shara’s Blood, let alone her alpha, if she would ever command me to do something like that.
It wasn’t in me. It wasn’t in her.
“Mama wasn’t ever right after that,” Mayte said. “She rarely talked and often just… existed. One bright sunny day, a hummingbird was flying near her, like she was playing with it. When Grandmama came back, Mama was gone. Even Grandmama’s alpha couldn’t find her. It was like she stepped outside the nest and disappeared. She was only gone two days, but when she came back, she was incredibly happy and better than she’d been in decades. She told Grandmama that he was coming back for her on the summer solstice, but he never did.”
“Did she know why?”
“Not at all. Mama fell into a deep depression, and Grandmama worried every day that she’d lose me. Weird things started to happen. Horrible storms. Giant spiders coming out of the jungle. Mama was terrified of them, but few people would know that.”
“Why was she scared of spiders?”
“House Tocatl, where she fostered, was dedicated to the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan. Even Grandmama doesn’t know much about Her, but She’s always pictured with spiders. Since few people would know that, Grandmama assumed that meant he was trying to kill Mama before she could deliver me.”
Shara didn’t reply, and I felt the turmoil in her mind. She didn’t want to give Mayte false hope, or worse, alarm her, but she didn’t want to deceive her either. Would she want to know about the mummy we’d found? Or how Shara intended to use him? Because her bond hardened with a cutting edge when she thought of the sun god hidden away in the basement of her building.
“If the attacks were targeted at me, wouldn’t they have continued all these years? Wouldn’t I have sensed him watching me? Hunting me?”
“Not necessarily,” Shara replied softly. “I found him in Skye Tower. He’s been here for a long time as far as we can tell, and very much dead.”
“Dead?” Mayte whispered. “But he’s a god.”
Through my queen’s bond, I felt Mayte’s shock and sorrow. She’d feared her father, but she’d also wanted to know him. She’d hoped that maybe…
Maybe he would love her.
Even two-hundred-year-old vampire queens still mourned for parents she’d never known.
“He’s been mummified and his body is definitely dead. Though I’m sure I can bring him back.”
Mayte gasped softly. “But should you? What if he really was trying to kill me? Would he go after Xochitl too?”
“Nothing is certain, but I think he must be a part of how I will take down Ra. In fact, some of Ra’s human goons broke in last night and tried to burn the mummy. I think Ra is just as scared that I’ll resurrect Huitzilopochtli as you are.”
“But why?” Mayte’s voice rang with bewilderment. “He’s a sun god. He joined Ra as far as we know.”
“Exactly. As far asweknow. I won’t know why he’s mummified and locked away in a queen’s nest until I wake him. Keisha was definitely scared of him and had put every protection she could think of on his prison, even though he’s dead. That tells me a lot about why he might have been there. I might not have tried to resurrect him, until they tried to destroy him.”
“But maybe that’s exactly why they tried.”
Shara sat upright rather than lounging back against me. “Maybe. Though when I laid the blood circle, I distinctly heard his voice telling me to wake him. He’s part of this, as surely as you are. That’s why I need to know as much about him as possible.”
“Well… Let’s see. He was one of the patron gods of Tenochtitlan. He was the god of war too. His mother was Coatlicue and according to the legends, he loved her dearly. There’s one story where he even killed his sister to protect his mother. They found a huge stone carving at the base of the Templo Mayor that shows her body cut up into pieces in his rage.”
